Ma Niche : Orange Yogurt Cake with Syrup (Yaourtopitta me Syropi)

Yesterday I baked Orange Yogurt Cake and then poured tons of honey syrup over it. The recipe was Greek and i found it in Aphrodite Polemis's cookbook From a Traditional Greek Kitchen.

besides wanting to bake something new and different, the thing that drove me to try this particular recipe was farina, one of the 'star' ingredients in the cake. i had never used farina before. in fact i had no idea as to what it was until yesterday. so you may say it was curiosity that made me try this cake. in case you too are ignorant about it, farina is a cereal food similar in texture to suji or semolina. once i saw how its texture was i thought, may be this cake was going to taste a bit like halwa. so i wasn't very surprised when the final product resembled a 'mithai' more than a cake. i mean cake in the sense of "birthday cake." however it is a nice sweet which i'll like plating out for Holi or Diwali or for Bijaya Dashomi, with an additional garnish of raisins and/or silvered almonds. though the recipe itself is pretty straight forward, soaking the cake in the syrup might take a while(at least it took my cake quite some time to absorb the syrup). so if you plan to bake it for any occasion, you'll probably want to get it done a day before.

Now the recipe of Yaourtopitta me Syropi adapted from From a Traditional Greek Kitchen.

ingredients

for the cake

1 1/2 cup farina
1/4 cup flour (i used all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cups honey
1 cup yogurt (i used Greek yogurt )
1/4 cup almonds, blanched and coarsely chopped
freshly squuezed juice from 1 orange

for the syrup

11/2 cup honey
1 1/4 cup water
1 thin slice of orange

what i did

first i preheated the oven to 350 degrees F and greased a 8x8 inch baking pan and kept it aside.
next i blanched the almonds, coarsely chopped them in the blender and kept them aside.
then i sifted together the farina, flour, baking powder and baking soda into a large mixing bowl.
to the sifted mixture i then added the honey, yogurt, almonds and orange juice.
stirred the ingredients till they were well combined.
then poured the batter into the prepared pan and baked for 40 minutes. (i think i overbaked the cake slightly and it should have been alright had i baked for 30 minutes or so. the original recipe had listed twice the quantity of ingredients and had recommended to bake for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake turns a light chest nut color. however i used the tooth-pick inserting test which i don't think it the correct way to check the doneness for this cake.)
while the cake was baking, prepared the syrup by combining honey, water and orange slice in a saucepan and cooking it over medium flame till the liquid began to boil. then lowering the heat i simmered the syrup for another 5 minutes. and through a strainer poured the hot syrup over the cake immediately after removing the baked cake from the oven.
the recipe asked not to cut the cake until all the syrup had been absorbed and the cake completely cool. i followed the instructions and it wasn't until 4-5 hours later that we had our first slice.

in my case the overbaking might have made the cake more dense and less porous thereby increasing the time required for absorption of the syrup. so one needs to be careful with the baking time i guess. also i used the juice of 1 orange as against 2 tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate which was mentioned in the recipe. i doubt if the substitution had anything to do with the denseness of the cake. but i thought i'll mention just in case one would try the recipe as mentioned in the book.

so that was my cake of the week. hope you had a good weekend. i had an extended one, since baby did not feel well enough for day care today. but we really enjoyed our day together with lots of action songs, peek-a-boo sessions and hot bowls of soup ! oh and we also bonded with spicy today :)